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Sunday, December 12, 2010

Treat Me To A (Christmas) Movie: Love Actually

As many of you mentioned in the comments of my last post, another excellent Christmas romantic comedy set in England is Love Actually. This movie features many actors who I love, namely Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, and the even-more-dashing-than-Jude-Law Colin Firth. (I like Colin Firth because he is dark haired and cranky-yet-good-hearted, just like my husband.)

The movie has many good points. I love the wedding scene with the band, and Rowan Atkinson’s tiny, hilarious role, and the conversation between Alan Rickman’s character and Laura Linney’s character about precisely how long she’s been in love with one of their office mates.

But I do feel that the remarkable Mr. Rickman gets a bad deal with this role as a bland married guy who can’t seem to decide what to do about the (completely creepy) advances of his young secretary. I prefer him in cranky-yet-good-hearted roles (surprise!) like Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility. My only other quibble with the movie is that Keira Knightly seems way too skinny. Perhaps because no one in the movie seems to eat. Ever. There are hors d’oeuvres served at a wedding, and sandwiches delivered to an office, and a few other cursory mentions of food, but that’s pretty much it. Not much for a blogger to go on, really.

The only food related scene that peaked my interest was when Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister asks who he would need to screw* to get a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit. Cue adorable office assistant with a tray of tea and cookies. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you can guess how that turns out.

The cookies she brings him are chocolate digestives. Just in case you’ve never had them, I will tell you they are dense and oatmeally and gently sweet. The chocolate covered ones are the best. When I was kid my British grandparents would buy them for us from Marks and Spencer. I can still find them at the grocery store, but not in any kind of vegan form. It never occurred to me to make my own until now.

I used regular white all purpose flour for these, and I think they would have been even better with whole wheat flour, since the texture is supposed to be kind of dense. The white flour made them a bit puffier than the store-bought version, but I wasn't going to complain. They were still the perfect cookies to have with a cup of tea and I had to put them in a tightly closed container way up high on top of our fridge to keep myself from eating the rest of them immediately.

With a pastry cutter, two knives, or your fingers, work the margarine into the dry ingredients until you have a coarse, crummy mixture.

Add in sugar, then milk and flax mixture. Add small amounts of milk, bit by bit, if your dough doesn't come together.

Form dough into a round, thick disk and wrap it in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for half an hour.

While dough is refrigerating, preheat oven to 375 degrees and cover two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Flour your counter top and rolling pin liberally. Try not to flour yourself liberally as well.

Roll the dough out to about a quarter inch thickness and use a cookie cutter (or a handy drinking glass) to cut the cookies into circles. You should end up with approximately two dozen cookies.

Place the cookies on your prepared baking sheets and poke them gently with a fork several times to make a pattern of small holes on the tops of the cookies.

Bake for 15 minutes, or until cookies begin to brown.

If you like chocolate digestives, like Hugh Grant does, then melt a big handful of chocolate chips with a teaspoon of margarine and, when cookies have cooled, use a knife to carefully spread of layer of chocolate on top of each one.

J.

*He really does say "screw" that's not me translating the more common British expression "shag". The exact quote is: "Right. Who do you have to screw around here to get a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit?"

10 comments:

I love that film so much.Yay for good English cinema. 2 of my favourite men too- Hugh Grant and Colin Firth :) They're not too old for 20 year old me are they?!Vegan digestives sound great, especially with choccy on.

This movie is one of my favorites year round, but especially at Christmas! And honestly my favorite line is the one you chose for your inspiration. Thanks for the recipe for the biscuits, I was just trying to explain what they were to my boyfriend. Now I can make him some!

I love this film, as well as the Holiday and most other xmas films. My fav part is when Hugh Grant dances around to the Pointer Sisters - and when he shows up at the girls house and he goes to the kids school with her.

Love Actually is one of my favourite Xmas movies. In fact, I quoted it in the car this morning. How brilliant is Emma Thompson in the scene where she realizes Alan Rickman didn't buy that necklace for her and then she pulls it together and carries on with Xmas for the kids' sake... Oh, I saw Alan Rickman at the theatre last year. I love that I have the same taste in theatre as Alan Rickman! It makes me feel so cultured :)

Love love love love LOVE everything about this post!! I went to watch Love Actually on Xmas this year like I do every year (along with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation) but I discovered I'd lost my copy and I had to wait until Sunday to go buy a new one. But then I discovered your lovely blog and that made it all better again :) Well done!